The Big Chart

Give yourself twenty minutes, and enjoy The Big Chart- a short film about an NCAA tournament to decide the best 'thing'. It is both funny and thought-provoking in a totally meaningless way- kind of like the best after-hours conversation you've ever had.

Word Of The Day: Rickrolling

From Wikipedia:

Rickrolling is an Internet meme typically involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a Web link that he or she claims is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true source of the link without clicking. When a person clicks on the link and is led to the web page, he or she is said to have been "Rickrolled" (also spelled Rickroll'd). By extension, it can also mean playing the song loudly in public in order to be disruptive.

The age of irony now reigns supreme over the internet. At first, this is a genuine funny prank. But then it gets co-opted into something much worse- an appreciation for an awful song which forgets why it was even started. By the time it hits network TV, it becomes such a Russian doll of a joke that you get exhausted trying to figure out why you're supposed to laugh.

As a cultural commentator, I'm left feeling cheated. What is important? That Rick Astley is alive and well? That a nagging buzzterm can infiltrate the mainstream to erupt on the float for a children's show on a traditional holiday platform?

I guess I just can't believe that the folks from the Today show are more on the pulse of the moment than I am. If this is hip, though, I'm ready for Florida.

Again, harrumph.

Star Wars Storyboards

In my quest to post all neat Stars Wars-related net finds for my fellow geeks, here is a flickr slideshow with a host of original storyboards. Very cool stuff, and worth a momentary dork-out.

Elvis With Cuppa

Photographer Steve Schofield has portraits of US pop-culture consumers in the British suburbs.

No one captures my dorkiness artfully.